A wide interpretation is given by the act of 1892 to the class of
workplace to which the limitation of hours applies. "Shop" means
retail and wholesale shops, markets, stalls and warehouses in which
assistants are employed for hire, and includes licensed public-houses
and refreshment houses of any kind. The person responsible for the
observance of the acts is the "employer" of the "young persons" (i.e.
persons under the age of eighteen years), whose hours are limited, and
of the "female assistants" for whom seats must be provided. Neither
the term "employer" nor "shop assistant" (used in the title of the act
of 1899) is defined; but other terms have the meaning assigned to them
in the Factory and Workshop Act 1878. The "employer" has, in case of
any contravention alleged, the same power as the "occupier" in the
Factory Acts to exempt himself from fine on proof of due diligence and
of the fact that some other person is the actual offender. The
provisions of the act of 1892 do not apply to members of the same
family living in a house of which the shop forms part, or to members
of the employer's family, or to any one wholly employed as a domestic
servant.
In London, where the County Council has appointed men and women
inspectors to apply the acts of 1892 to 1899, there were, in 1900,
73,929 premises, and in 1905, 84,269, under inspection. In the latter
year there were 22,035 employing persons under 18 years of age. In
1900 the number of young persons under the acts were: indoors, 10,239
boys and 4428 girls; outdoors, 35,019 boys, 206 girls. In 1905 the
ratio between boys and girls had decidedly altered: indoors, 6602
boys, 4668 girls; outdoors, 22,654 boys, 308 girls. The number of
irregularities reported in 1900 were 9204 and the prosecutions were
117; in 1905 the irregularities were 6966 and the prosecutions
numbered 34. As regards the act of 1899, in only 1088 of the 14,844
shops affected in London was there found in 1900 to be failure to
provide seats for the women employed in retailing goods. The chief
officer of the Public Control Department reported that with very few
exceptions the law was complied with at the end of the first year of
its application.
As regards cleanliness, ventilation, drainage, water-supply and
sanitary condition generally, shops have been since 1878 (by 41 Vict.
c. 16, s. 101) subject to the provisions of the Public Health Act
1875, which apply to all buildings, except factories under the Factory
Acts, in which any persons, whatever their number be, are employed.
Thus, broadly, the same sanitary provisions apply in shops as in
workshops, but in the former these are enforced solely by the officers
of the local authority, without reservation of any power, as in
workshops for the Home Office inspectorate, to act in default of the
local authority.
Shop assistants, so far as they are engaged in manual, not merely
clerical labour, come under the provisions of the Truck Acts 1831 to
1887, and in all circumstances they fall within the sections directed
against unfair and unreasonable fines in the Truck Act of 1896; but,
unlike employés in factories, workshops, laundries and mines, they are
left to apply these provisions so far as they can themselves, since
neither Home Office inspectors nor officers of the local authority
have any specially assigned powers to administer the Truck Acts in
shops.
The Truck Act 1887.
Persons benefited by Truck Acts.
_Truck._--Setting aside the special Hosiery Manufacture (Wages) Act
1874, aimed at a particular abuse appearing chiefly in the hosiery
industry--the practice of making excessive charges on wages for
machinery and frame rents--only two acts, those of 1887 and 1896, have
been added to the general law against truck since the act of 1831, which
repealed all prior Truck Acts and which remains the principal act.
Further amendments of the law have been widely and strenuously demanded,
and are hoped for as the result of the long inquiry by a departmental
committee appointed early in 1906. The Truck Act Amendment Act 1887,
amended and extended the act without adding any distinctly new
principle; the Truck Act of 1896 was directed towards providing remedies
for matters shown by decisions under the earlier Truck Acts to be
outside the scope of the principles and provisions of those acts. Under
the earlier acts the main objects were: (1) to make the wages of
workmen, i.e. the reward of labour, payable only in current coin of the
realm, and to prohibit whole or part payment of wages in food or drink
or clothes or any other articles; (2) to forbid agreements, express or
implied, between employer and workmen as to the manner or place in
which, or articles on which, a workman shall expend his wages, or for
the deduction from wages of the price of articles (other than materials
to be used in the labour of the workmen) supplied by the employer. The
act of 1887 added a further prohibition by making it illegal for an
employer to charge interest on any advance of wages, "whenever by
agreement, custom, or otherwise a workman is entitled to receive in
anticipation of the regular period of the payment of his wages an
advance as part or on account thereof." Further, it strengthened the
section of the principal act which provided that no employer shall have
any action against his workman for goods supplied at any shop belonging
to the employer, or in which the employer is interested, by (a) securing
any workman suing an employer for wages against any counter-claim in
respect of goods supplied to the workman by any person under any order
or direction of the employer, and (b) by expressly prohibiting an
employer from dismissing any worker on account of any particular time,
place or manner of expending his wages. Certain exemptions to the
prohibition of payment otherwise than in coin were provided for in the
act of 1831, if an agreement were made in writing and signed by the
worker, viz. rent, victuals dressed and consumed under the employer's
roof, medicine, fuel, provender for beasts of burden used in the trade,
materials and tools for use by miners, advances for friendly societies
or savings banks; in the case of fuel, provender and tools there was
also a proviso that the charge should not exceed the real and true
value. The act of 1887 amended these provisions by requiring a correct
annual audit in the case of deductions for medicine or tools, by
permitting part payment of servants in husbandry in food, drink (not
intoxicants) or other allowances, and by prohibiting any deductions for
sharpening or repairing workmen's tools except by agreement not forming
part of the condition of hiring. Two important administrative amendments
were made by the act of 1887: (1) a section similar to that in the
Factory and Mines Acts was added, empowering the employer to exempt
himself from penalty for contravention of the acts on proof that any
other person was the actual offender and of his own due diligence in
enforcing the execution of the acts; (2) the duty of enforcing the acts
in factories, workshops, and mines was imposed upon the inspectors of
the Factory and Mines Departments, respectively, of the Home Office, and
to their task they were empowered to bring all the authorities and
powers which they possessed in virtue of the acts under which they are
appointed; these inspectors thus prosecute defaulting employers and
recover penalties under the Summary Jurisdiction Acts, but they do not
undertake civil proceedings for improper deductions or payments,
proceedings for which would lie with workmen under the Employers and
Workmen Act 1875. The persons to whom the benefits of the act applied
were added to by the act of 1887, which repealed the complicated list of
trades contained in the principal act and substituted the simpler
definition of the Employers and Workmen Act, 1875. Thus the acts 1831 to
1887, and also the act of 1896, apply to all workers (men, women and
children) engaged in manual labour, except domestic servants; they apply
not only in mines, factories and workshops, but, to quote the published
Home Office Memorandum on the acts, "in all places where workpeople are
engaged in manual labour under a contract with an employer, whether or
no the employer be an owner or agent or a parent, or be himself a
workman; and therefore a workman who employs and pays others under him
must also observe the Truck Acts." The law thus in certain circumstances
covers outworkers for a contractor or sub-contractor. A decision of the
High Court at Dublin in 1900 (_Squire_ v. _Sweeney_) strengthened the
inspectors in investigation of offences committed amongst outworkers by
supporting the contention that inquiry and exercise of all the powers of
an inspector could legally take place in parts of an employer's premises
other than those in which the work is given out. It defined for Ireland,
in a narrower sense than had hitherto been understood and acted upon by
the Factory Department, the classes of outworkers protected, by
deciding that only such as were under a contract personally to execute
the work were covered. In 1905 the law in England was similarly declared
in the decided case of _Squire_ v. _The Midland Lace Co._ The judges
(Lord Alverstone, C.J.; and Kennedy and Ridley, J.J.) stated that they
came to the conclusion with "reluctance," and said: "We venture to
express the hope that some amendment of the law may be made so as to
extend the protection of the Truck Act to a class of workpeople
indistinguishable from those already within its provisions." The workers
in question were lace-clippers taking out work to do in their homes, and
in the words of the High Court decision "though they do sometimes employ
assistants are evidently, as a class, wage-earning manual labourers and
not contractors in the ordinary and popular sense." The principle relied
on in the decision was that in the case of _Ingram_ v. _Barnes_.